News Posts

Balliol and Backworth Park Primary Schools took part in the 111th Wansbeck Music Festival last Friday 31st March at the Nortumberland Church of England Academy School in Ashington. While there have been many more accomplished performers over the years of the Festival, we doubt there have many more enthusiastic!

Balliol performed “Freres Jacques” and “Get on Up, Get on Down” while Backworth Park performed “Catch a Falling Star” and “United” featuring “The Blaydon Races”. This was the culmination of all the hard work done over our second term.

The photos show Backworth Park Primary School brass group including teaching staff Sarah and Carole who learn alongside the children, with tutors Gavin, Natalie and Leah conducting and supporting!

The adjudicator summed up the performances with comments like “You have achieved a huge amount in a short space of time” and “promising work and delivered confidently and all with a fun atmosphere”. See attached remarks for the full judgement!

It was a shame that our other brass group at Burradon Community Primary School were unable to take part as they had another event on at school.

We look forward to returning next year and hopefully show the progress we’ve made by then!

Backworth feedback page 1; Backworth feedback page 2

Balliol feedback page 1; Balliol feedback page 2

 

As preparation for the Wansbeck Music Festival, Balliol Primary band played at the School Assembly on Thursday.

We played our 2 pieces: “Frere Jacques” (Brother Jack) and “Get on Up, Get on Down”, and 3 of the band (Mara and Angelos and their mother) performed their own arrangement of “Star Wars” and “Ode to Joy” that they had been practicing at home. As the photos show we have 2 parents in the band learning alongside their children.

It was very well received, and the best bit was hearing lots of the children behind me clapping along to “Get on Up, Get on Down”!

Backworth Park Primary band also performed at their School assembly on Monday: “Catch a Falling Star” and “United” featuring the “Blaydon Races”. We weren’t quite ready with the final arrangements as performance pieces, so it was bit stop and start but we played each section through and then sort out the links at Thursday’s after school brass group.

 

With only 6 weeks this half term until the Easter break, we are now concentrating on our performance pieces for the Wansbeck Music Festival on Friday 31st March. We have entered Backworth Park and Balliol Primary brass groups in the B17a Beginner Brass Group category. Unfortunately Burradon Community Primary are busy with other activities and cannot take part.

Backworth Park are busy rehearsing “Catch a Falling Star” and “United”, while Balliol are working on “Get on Up, Get on Down” and “Frere Jacques”. Burradon Community will have a chance to perform to parents and at a School Assembly in the last week of term, and are working on “United” and we’ll choose one or two other arrangements for them to perform as well.

You can find the sheet music for these on our Information page.

 

Exciting news…plans are underway to develop a Youth Brass Band at George Stephenson High School (GSHS)!

We met with the Head of Music, Katie Brookbank, yesterday and got an enthusiastic reception for our vision to develop a youth brass band at a High School to provide a progression route for our Primary School students, and to open up brass playing to more children.

We are hoping to visit the other Primary Schools that feed into GSHS and give demonstrations and taster sessions to their year 6 children, then invite those who are interested to a “Play Day” at GSHS in June. We will also invite any children already at GSHS to join in a new after school brass group starting in September.

Several of our learners at Backworth Park and Burradon Community Primary Schools will be moving to GSHS in September and we hope they will want to continue with their brass playing. If we can recruit additional children to join them we should soon have a developing embryonic brass band!

All we have to do now is raise the funding for a Musical Director to lead it, and for the instruments we will need!

 

We’ve lost a few of our learners for various reasons – e.g. moved School, clash with other activities or just decided not to continue – but we’ve also recruited 4 new starters at Balliol Primary together with a parent, so we now have good numbers in each school:
Backworth Park Primary School – 15 children and 2 members of teaching staff
Balliol Primary School – 11 children, 2 parents and a teacher
Burradon Community Primary School – 11 children, 1 parent and a teaching assistant
Total – 37 children, 3 parents and 4 members of teaching staff

We are working on tunes “Get on up, Get on down”, “Freres Jacques” and “Catch a Falling Star” and giving everyone some individual tuition using the Toon Larner worksheets. We’ve found that they are learning the notes well by name and starting to recognise them as notes on the music stave. They are making great progress and getting good at listening and copying but more work is needed on tonguing and pitching notes.

We have entered the Backworth and Balliol brass groups into the Wansbeck Music Festival beginners brass ensemble event on Friday 31st March, and we will no doubt be arranging some performances in School before then.

As we start a new term, with the success of our Christmas performances behind us, we want to develop the children and adults in our brass groups more systematically and give them as much individual attention as possible. So we have come up with our “Toon Larner” worksheets which they can take home and practice, and then show us what they can do so we can help and guide them.

There are separate worksheets for Toon Larner for Cornet and Toon Larner for Trombone.

Level 1 has 2 worksheets and covers the first 5 notes we have learnt so we can check their breathing, tonguing, sound, knowledge of the notes and how to play them and having a sense of rhythm (keeping time).

Level 2 moves them onto moving from one note to another more quickly, and playing simple rhythms.

Level 3 will introduce flats and sharps (Bb, Eb and F#), dynamics (p=quiet and f=loud) and extend their range from low Bb up to Bb on the stave.

etc.

Each of our brass groups has given Christmas performances to parents and the rest of the School.

Backworth Park Primary have been the busiest and you can read about their performances, and see photos and videos, in the previous post.

Balliol Primary brass group played at the Carol Service held in St Mary Magdalene Church, Longbenton on Monday 12th December. They played Away in a Manger before our tutors led the congregation in singing the carol, and they played Carol of the Drum before the School Choir gave a splendid rendition of the same csrol. It was lovely to see so many children taking part in the service, and many parents too.

Burradon Community brass group gave a performance of Away in a Manger and Carol of the Drum to parents at the end of our last brass group session on Tuesday 13th Dec, and then to the rest of the School during the Assembly on the last day of term on Friday 16th Dec.

Hopefully, these performance will have given all the children and adult learners confidence, and increased their enthusiasm to learn to play music! Certainly, it has lifted the status of the brass groups within the schools and shown many of the parents just what their children have achieved in a very short time!

Well done everyone.

  

All 19 children plus the Head Carol Crerar and teaching staff Sarah and Carole boarded a coach to take the short ride from Backworth to Seghill on Thursday 24th Nov. We were off to play at the Seghill Christmas Lights switch-on event. We were the stars of the show, if we say so ourselves, playing Carol of the Drum with Gavin conducting and Natalie playing the drum. More photos here.

Members of Backworth Colliery Band joined us to play a few carols including leading the community sing-along of Hark the Herald Angels. Impressively, many of the children knew the words of other carols and sang along to quite a few! We also enjoyed the free roast chestnuts and sweets!

Then on Monday 5th December, another performance this time as part of the School Christmas Concert. Many of the children are in both the choir and band, so there had to be a short gap between the band playing and the choir singing, so that instruments could be put away! Once again, members of Backworth Colliery Band plus tutors Natalie and Nicola played carols including leading the community singing of Jingles Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas.

PS Today (15th Dec) we did a final School Assembly performance, to let the children perform Away in a Manger (which wasn’t ready for the previous performances), Carol of the Drum and show the rest of the School what we’ve achieved in such a short time.

Fantastic Christmas coffee afternoon @backworth_park with @backworthband #ntbrassinschools. Great job! pic.twitter.com/c1EyXBlrPB

— NTMEH (@NTMEHUK) December 7, 2016

More photos and videos to follow.

Wow! Our first public performance! 12 children from the 3 Primary Schools came with their families to Whitley Bay on Friday afternoon to take part in North Tyneside’s Christmas Lights switch-on event.

We played our arrangement of Carol of the Drum, twice through, and played it again once through as an encore at the end of our slot. Natalie started the rhythm going on the drum and Gavin conducted the children using a big board with the notes written out. Many thanks to the members of Backworth Colliery Band who came to support the children and play some carols.

There are 2 videos on our YouTube channel so far:

Video taken from right hand side

Video taken from left hand side

We’ve submitted an order for additional instruments so that each of our children can borrow one to take home and practice.

We’ve ordered an additional 8 Tromba cornets and 6 Tromba trombones which will take our total to 33 cornets and 18 trombones. We’ve also ordered another 25 music stands to go with them, giving us 50 music stands.

The money to pay for these has been raised from North Tyneside Music Education Hub, John Lewis Music Matters, R W Mann Trust and private donations. So far we have raised a little over £5,000 and will have spent just under £4,500 on instruments and music stands.

A very big thank you to our friends at enjoymuzic music shop at the Royal Quays outlet shopping centre in North Shields. They have been fantastic in helping us get the instruments at the best possible price, and by ordering through North Tyneside Council we are able to buy them without VAT, as they are for educational purposes.